The Party Crasher(72)

  “I wouldn’t have thought any of that.” I look at his face, wanting suddenly to give him a long, tight hug. “You know I wouldn’t.”

  “The trouble is, the longer I left it, the harder it was.” He shrugs. “If it makes you feel any better, I only told Mum the whole story about a month ago.”

      “A month ago?” I stare at him. “Your mum?”

  “I know.” He nods, shamefaced. “She was shocked. Really shocked. Quite distraught. Then, almost at once, she said, ‘Joe, you have to tell Effie.’ I actually came to this party hoping you’d be here. Hoping I might have a chance to…put things straight. Four years too late.”

  My mind drifts back to that awful meeting, four years ago, in the café. Joe could barely meet my eye. He sounded like a robot. But instead of wondering if there was more to it, I took him at face value. I blamed him. But I should have known. I should have known.

  “Joe, I feel terrible,” I say in a rush of remorse. “I said some awful things to you.”

  “I don’t blame you,” says Joe quickly. “You felt let down. It was understandable.”

  As his eyes flick to my collarbone again, I remember my savage parting shot to him. Well, it’s lucky you only gave me the Smallest Diamond in the World. I didn’t mind too much when I chucked it in the bin.

  Now I let myself remember the devastated look in his eyes as I said it. Why didn’t I notice that? Why didn’t I realize?

  “I wish you’d told me, Joe.” I smile, but there are tears on my lashes. “I understand why you didn’t, but I really, really wish you had. It might have meant…” I swallow. “We might not be…”

  Our lives would be totally different now, I want to say, but it sounds a bit too drama queen. Even if it is, in my opinion, true.

      “I know. But I wasn’t right for a long time. And by the time I finally got my head together, you were in a relationship. You were happy. What was I going to do, disrupt that? Call up and say, You know how I broke your heart? Well, guess what, I have an explanation now. It was too late. I couldn’t expect you to forgive me.” Joe meets my eyes briefly, his face a little bleak. “Maybe sometimes in life you just miss your chance.”

  “I wasn’t happy,” I say, my voice tiny. “I wasn’t.”

  Joe is silent for a moment, as though digesting my words.

  “You looked happy. You went out with that guy Dominic. And before that, you were with…” He hesitates, as though he can’t believe he’s saying the word. “Humph.”

  “Don’t mention Humph.” I clap a mortified hand over my face. “Please don’t mention Humph. I’m so ashamed of that.”

  “I’ll admit it was a surprise. Even Mum, who was firmly on your side, wavered a bit when she saw you with Humph at the carol service.” He pauses. “In that extraordinary fur hat. Calling him ‘darling.’?”

  I peek out between my fingers, to see him give a sudden snort of mirth.

  “Humph, darling,” he says, imitating me. “Humph, you’re an absolute scream.”

  “Don’t!” I say, giggling in spite of myself.

  “I didn’t think it was funny then, obviously,” says Joe. “But now…it is quite funny.”

  I smile back at him, almost shyly. Can we still laugh? If we can, it feels like a small miracle.

  “I’m sorry I behaved like that at the carol service.” I shake my head ruefully. “It was all an act. I wanted to show you what you were missing.” I pause, then add awkwardly, “Humph and I never…”

      “Didn’t you?” says Joe after a pause.

  “No.”

  Somehow I need him to know this fact. But I can’t tell if it makes any difference to anything. Joe’s face is closed up, his eyes dark with thoughts I can’t read. The atmosphere is getting too intense, and I swivel away.

  “Funny we should wind up here,” I say, scuffing the wooden floor with my foot. “The place where it ended.”

  There’s silence, and I watch the dust motes floating in a shaft of sunshine. Then Joe replies in a low voice, “I don’t think of it like that. I think of it as the place where it began.”

  His words take me by surprise. For years, I’ve only thought of this tree house as the backdrop to devastation, humiliation, weeping. But now my mind is leapfrogging back to a previous time. A sun-dappled, endless afternoon. Two teenagers, finding their way with each other for the first time. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the scratchy rug. The rough wooden floor. Joe’s body on mine, more hard and assured and insistent than I’d ever known it. Sensations which seemed both new and timeless. Pain and bliss.

  I’d forgotten. No, I hadn’t forgotten, exactly. I’d chosen not to recall. But now…Slowly I turn back to look at Joe, my head tingling. The air is coming alive; I can feel it. A prickling atmosphere is growing between us. And to match it, my body is coming alive. I’m filled with a strong, pulsating hunger.